MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY, MSNBC ANCHOR: This morning, my question, why did an NFL team drop its best wide receiver?

Plus, 50 years since the civil rights act. And Twitter activism, from Cuba to Colbert.

But first, there is a great debate taking place, and we`re bringing it to Nerdland.

Good morning. I`m Melissa Harris-Perry.

Over the past few weeks, an important public debate has been taking place online about race, culture, and poverty. Now, the principles are two very smart people, who write for two well-regarded magazines.

This is Jonathan Chait, a writer for "New York" magazine, a self-professed liberal who writes about politics and media. This is tan Ta-Nehisi Coates, national correspondent for the Atlantic.

Now, I should disclose that he once described me as America`s foremost public intellectual, which was not only an overstatement, but also a designation of far more descriptive of the prolific Coates himself.

So, those are the interlocketters. And here`s what sparked the debate. Here`s Congressman Paul Ryan on March 12th.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL RYAN (R), HOUSE BUDGET COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: We have got this tailspin of culture in our inner cities in particular of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. And so there`s a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: The backlash to Ryan`s comments was swift. Congressman Barbara Lee described them as a thinly Israeli veiled racial attack, and they pointed to the hypocrisy of Ryan`s insistence on cultural persistence for policy while advancing policies the deepen inequality.

And as is frequently the case, Ta-Nehisi Coates on March 18th made a contribution to this discussion that was especially insightful.

He pointed to the (INAUDIBLE) similarities between Congressman Ryan`s culture statement and President Obama`s repeated invocations of cousin Pooky when talking to a black audience about how to lessen inequality. Now, Coates was less interested in lambasting this president in particular, than reminding us about the slippery assumptions about blackness, poverty and cultural deficiency that are ubiquitous.

White conservatives do this pathologizing, of course, just look at Congressman Ryan. White liberals do it, see President Clinton`s determination to end welfare as we knew it. Black conservatives do it. Just look at the new black conservative magazine, "American Current See," whose mission is transcending is quote "transcending race to delivering the awareness of a culture free of government dependency."

As Coates was pointing out, even black liberals tend to conflate poverty with pathology, even President Obama. Here is the president announcing that my brother`s keeper initiative in February, a program designed to remove the structural obstacles to success for young men of color.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes, we need to invest in our schools, make college more affordable and government has a role to play. And yes, we need to encourage fathers to stick around and remove the barriers to marriage and talk openly about things like responsibility and faith and community. And in the words of Dr. King, it is not either/or, it is both/and.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: So are you still with me? Conservative congressman invokes cultural poverty. Progressives cry foul. Smart cultural observer points o out that the president is sometimes guilty of the same strategy.

On March 19th, enter Jonathan Chait who responded by defending the idea that culture is, at least in part, responsible for the perpetuation of African-American poverty. He wrote, it would be bizarre to image that centuries of slavery followed by systemic terrorism, segregation, discrimination, a legacy wealth gap, and so on did not leave a cultural residue that itself became an impediment to success.

Coates then responded, quote, "Chait believes it`s bizarre to think otherwise. I think it`s bizarre that he doesn`t bother to see his argument as if it`s actually true. Oppression might well produce a culture of failure. It might also produce a warrior spirit and a deep commitment to attaining the very things that have been so often withheld from you. There is no need for theorizing, the answers are knowable."

And that is when it started to get good. Chait, March 28th, Barack Obama versus the culture of poverty. Coates, March 30th, other people`s theologies. Chait, March 31, Ta-Nahesi Coates disagrees with Jonathan Chait and so do I. Coates, April 1, the blue period, an origin story. And so on.

Nerdalicious, good. Wickedly smart people using enormous words, complex sentence structures, and thinly veiled intellectual shade to discuss consequential issues. And it wasn`t having in some college people were paying attention. Writers at "the nation," the American Prospect, "The New York Times" all jumped in to tap out Coates or Chait and get their own licks in. Heck, even Gawker covered it.

Now, call that a win for the public democratic deliberation. But as much as I eagerly anticipated each new entry in this thoroughly engrossing conversation, it was also disappointing. Many times in American history, African-Americans have entered these discussions only to discover that those who were supposed to be political allays are eager to argue there is something inherently, residually wrong with black people. Far less frequently to impoverish black folks find a public ally among the intelligence of willing and able to insert without qualification their humanity, dignity and absolute worthiness.

Coates has done so unwaveringly. And watching it happen in realtime has been stunning. I am pleased to welcome to the table, Ta-Nehisi Coates, National correspondent for "the Atlantic." And I would also like to note here that did we invite Jonathan Chait as well, but he was not available today.

Ta-Nehisi, nice for being here.

TA-NEHISI COATES, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, THE ATLANTIC: Thanks for having me, Melissa.

HARRIS-PERRY: So this has really taken on a very high level of public interest. To what do you attribute that at this moment, given that you write about these kinds of things regularly, why has this captured public attention?

COATES: I actually don`t know. I never know what`s going to catch fire and what`s not going to catch fire. But I think there`s a deep, deep presumption across the board in America that there is something culturally wrong with people who are poor and specifically with African-Americans. And I think that`s accepted wisdom right now for whatever reason. Barack Obama, whenever he makes that statement, whenever the president does that sort of speech, he always gets applause.

HARRIS-PERRY: From African-American audiences.

COATES: From African-American audience. And by across the way, I mean, even among African-Americans. I think people think it`s a little bizarre when you say, no, no, no, it`s not culture at all. It`s not culture at all.

HARRIS-PERRY: So part of how Chait begins his conversation with you in his response back, he returns to a piece you wrote in October of 2010, where you talk about basically, I think what we would describe as coat-switching, learning that the sets of tools that you had in one space are not appropriate tools or effective tools for you to use in another.

What is it that you think Chait misunderstood about what you were trying to say in that piece?

COATES: Well his argument and this is the argument, you know, across the board, is that this is cultural residue. In other words, there`s something that happened in the past that has nothing to do with what you`re going through right now and you`re bringing that forward. Bit intergenerational, be it in a pass life. When I had that incident, I was living in Harlem. I was, I think, about six months removed from unemployment. I had just, you know, lost a job. I actually didn`t have a job at that point, even when I was out there freelance writing. I was living in the environment where that would have been appropriate. It was nothing residual about it at all. It just so happened where I was working, it was clearly not appropriate.

HARRIS-PERRY: Right.

COATES: And, you know, that`s a lesson that, you know, folks have to learn. I`m totally in favor with teaching that lesson, by the way. I do think people need to learn that certain behaviors are appropriate one place, and certain behaviors are not appropriate other places. But this is not residue. White supremacy is not residue. It is a real lived thing for African-American.

HARRIS-PERRY: All right, I want to talk about that discourse of white supremacy because it is one of the important pushbacks that you give to the cultural pathology argument. So what is at stake for you intellectually and politically to say that what we face in terms of questions of continuing racial inequality needs to be ascribed to continuing white supremacy, and help us to understand what you mean when you say that, versus a cultural residue among African-Americans.

COATES: Well I think part of the problem is that liberals are progressives when we talk about this. We have this idea, we were racist in the past, and we are suffering after-effects. But what academics know. I mean, you can, you know, go out and look at the studies, and you can see young African-Americans who are looking for low-wage jobs, have about the same chance of getting a job as a white person with a felony on their record. I mean, when we see things, this is a thing that`s happening right now. A really, really small number of people on the planet earth are African-American males. And yet, eight percent of the incarcerated population on the planet earth is African-American and male. You can`t separate those two things out. This is happening right now.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, OK, but let`s go to that. Because -- so I love the piece of social science research you just told us. That`s diva pages research in March, that if employers are looking at a resume of an African-American without a felony and a white applicant with a felony --

HARRIS-PERRY: I`m just a nerd, right? So the idea that we see like decisions being made in employment right now, but when you say the piece about incarceration, that`s the kind of data point that is simply a data point, right? So you have mass incarceration. But then, what happens is precisely this ability to have a conversation about, well, why, then? Is it because of criminality? Heightened criminality among African-American men, or is it because of heightened policing among African-American men. How would we --because you say the answers are knowable. How would we begin to know those answers?

COATES: Well, I think one of the regrettable things, there`s a great disconnect. I would say, specifically, with historians, but I think this goes across the board, in terms of the academy and people over here who write about it in the press. And I would like to see more of a convergence, more of a conversation back and forth. Because, oftentimes, when I talk to social sciences, when I talk to historians, they know the answers. It`s not really blurry for them at all.

So if I make the statement that white supremacy is at the core of American history and will likely be a problem with us, until the end of our days. If I tell a group of historians that water is wet, it`s not a remarkable statement. And yet, out here for some reason, it`s like, you know, stunning to say that.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, do you think it`s a great debate or a dumb debate that we are having? In other words, you know, this is the great debate of our moment. But should we even be debating this?

COATES: Yes, yes, yes. As much as I disagree with Jonathan, I really appreciate him engaging me on it. I think Jonathan is a fantastic writer. And I`m happy to do this. You know, I really, really am. I appreciate him jumping in.

HARRIS-PERRY: Yes, you do. The two of you certainly do perform a certain level respectful discourse. And even to the extent you throw a shade on each other, it`s always intellectual.

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS-PERRY: When we come back, I`m going to ask you a little bit about -- you do this French performance thing that I think is fascinating, when we come back. Stay with us for just a minute. We`ll bring more voices in.

But first, I want to give everyone an update on the latest on the search for the missing Malaysia airlines jet. A second ship, an Australian vessel, has detected an acoustic signal in the search area in the Indian Ocean Saturday. A Chinese ship reported two sets of signals. It is still unclear if the acoustic signals are coming from the missing plane`s black boxes. But officials are investigating. We will continue to follow the latest developments in this story.

But when we come back, we`re going to expand our conversation about race and culture to talk about the role of rage and the public`s response. But as we go to break, I want you to listen to an argument about black cultural pathology from a source that you may find surprising. Here`s Malcolm x in 1963.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MALCOM X, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST: The only way that we can solve our problem is to unite together among ourselves, among our own kind, clean ourselves up, rid ourselves of the evils that we`ve become addicted to here in this society and try and solve our problem ourselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: We told you this debate grew far and wide. Andrew Sullivan over at the dish inserted himself into the discussion. He wrote about his concern for Mr. Coates that, quote, "his depression about the state of America was weakening his usual strengths."

Sullivan also shared some of his readers` comments, that Coates` blog has sadly turned into a place of utter depression and despair, that his anger is clouding his vision. That I pray my friend circles back to hope soon.

There is important historical context here. Words like depression and despair remind me that for more than a century, African-Americans expressing frustration with the United States have been suspected not of righteous anger, but of mental illness.

In 1851, a doctor coined the phrase, Drake Demania, a medical condition that he said caused slaves to try to escape. Quote "the cause in most of the cases that induces the Negro to run away from service is much more of a disease of the mind and much more curable as a general rule."

In the 1960s, there were scientists who suggested that participants in race riots had some kind of brain dysfunction, and they conducted experiments by burning out small areas of cells in their patients` brains.

And in 1967, there was Martin Luther King Jr., addressing the American psychology association about the term, maladjustment. He said, quote, "there are some things concerning, which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of goodwill. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and variable segregation."

Still with me is Ta-Nehisi Coates, national correspondent for "the Atlantic." Joining the table now is Cristina Beltran who is associate professor of social and culture analysis at New York University, Britney Cooper, assistant professor of women and gender`s studies at Africa Studies at Rutgers University, and Tanner Colby, author of "some of my best friends are black."

Welcome, everyone.

Mr. Coates, are you just depressed?

COATES: You know, it goes back to that water is wet thing. You know, I feel like I talk to academics about this, and they`re like, yes, this is the world. But there`s this American need to believe everything is going to get better. That we`re going to triumph in the end which is bizarre and I don`t think is necessarily healthy. I mean, we might triumph in the end, but we won`t triumph in the end by assuring ourselves that we will triumph in the end. I think we need to be really, really aware of the dangers we face.

HARRIS-PERRY: All right. So, I want to give Chait his language here about this notion of progress. So let`s look at what Chait had to say and then I want to ask you a bit about it, Tanner.

He says -- he writes, it`s hard to explain how the United States has progressed from chattel slavery to emancipation to the end of lynching to the end of legal segregation to the election of an African-American president if America has rarely been the ally of African-Americans, as some response to Coates, and often its nemesis. It is one thing to notice the persistence of racism, quite another to interpret the history of black America, as mainly one of continuity, rather than mainly one of progress.

So this is the kind of racial optimism we see here from Chait. And then I think does often inflect the conversations between white liberals and African-American, not all African-Americans, some African-Americans, around the question of sort of where America is going and where we`ve been.

TANNER COLBY, AUTHOR, SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE BLACK: Right. I think, as a white person who tackles this subject a lot, it`s very easy for someone like me or someone like Jonathan Chait. I can write about race all day long and at 8:00 turn it off and put on "parks & rec" and there`s no moral fatigue to it from me. It is intellectual challenging, it is engaging, but doesn`t bring any sense of, you know, an emotional cost.

Whereas, you know, you see, and so the attitude of someone like Chait is like, hey, guys, why are we slowing down, you know? Things are great. And it`s very easy to have that perspective. When you saw that at the end of the civil rights movement, where like, you know, sneak was getting radicalized than, you know, voting for (INAUDIBLE) to an organization. And all these white liberals were very nice like, hey, guys, you know, why are we slowing down? What`s going on?

HARRIS-PERRY: So, it`s interesting, this language of moral and emotional fatigue. I mean, on the one hand, I was so irritated by those comments of Mr. Sullivan`s readers that could read the kind of analysis of Coates and see it as just an expression of depression. On the other hand, I don`t want to lose that there is an emotional cost to the work of race, particularly for those who are on the margins of that inequality.

BRITTNEY COOPER, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY: Absolutely. Look, one of the things is we live in a country that is deeply and profoundly uncomfortable with black rage, right? And at the same time, we have always attributed to people of color and to women, this sort of hyper emotionalism. And it`s a way to pare down the kind of radicalism and rigor of the critique, right, and to not listen.

And so, what we have to be doing is thinking about how we can hold intention, the legitimacy of these emotions and recognize that that doesn`t mean that folks are not interested in progress at the same time.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, I like this language about, that if you`re just mad, and not mad about something, then I don`t have to somehow address that thing that you might be mad about, right? The kind of content of what that anger is, the righteousness of it.

So, help me to understand, Cristina, what is standing in there about this notion of, I pray my friend comes back around to hope like that particular discourse --

CHRISTINA BELTRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, NEW YORK CITY UNIVERSITY: No. I think there`s something really interesting about the affective labor that African-Americans and other people of color are asked to do this kind of emotional labor of performing hope and performing optimism. And I think one of the interesting things I`ve been interested in this whole debate is how people talk past each other, is that in many ways, what you`re asking people to do and what a lot of African-American intellectuals and race scholars in general ask people to do is to sit with the tragedy of white racism, or to sit with the tragedy of racial violence, and really sit with it and think about it and engage it, and not always shift to the happy ending, to the language of innocence. And so to really do that is difficult. And I think that`s one of the reasons why there`s always this demand to perform joy and pleasure and, you know, and things are getting better.

And I think the other part that`s a little confusing for white liberals in particular is the language of hope also suffuses African-American discourse. Barack Obama run on the language if hope. (INAUDIBLE) with Jessie Jackson`s call. So, but there`s a kind of gothic hope, there is a hope that`s deep, it is a blues hope, a hope that`s tied to a history of something much more complicated language of hope than I think the kind of feel good easy progress --

COATES: It`s a rigorous hope.

BELTRAN: Rigorous hope. Yes.

COATES: A mature hope.

BELTRAN: It is a grownup, it is a tragic hope, right? And think that logic is much harder to try to get people to sit with.

HARRIS-PERRY: So I like the performance of hope. And I wonder -- want to ask you two questions here, even though we have no time.

One is whether or not you think that performance of hope is part of what was so seductive about President Obama as candidate Obama, that he performs hope quite consciously.

COATES: Right.

HARRIS-PERRY: Talk to me about that first.

BELTRAN: Yes, no, and there are -- and people should be hopeful. You know, I never thought we would have an African-American, but that does mean something. And yes, there has been progress. Saying that there has been progress is one statement. Saying that it`s been progress because we`ve had some alliance, because the country has been on our side, for most of American history, is a totally, totally different statement.

Behind that progress is the bodies of a lot of black people -- the broken bodies, the lynched bodies, the raped bodies, the plundered bodies of a great deal of black people. And if you have to sit with that, you don`t tend to come out with this jaunty, happy view of American history.

HARRIS-PERRY: There is one thing you do in where are writing around the culture of pathology that I want to end on here. That is, you committed to the study of French and French culture and a French language. And there is way which you often performing that -- so even in the piece from 2010, it begins with you and your son, going to a French film festival.

COATES: Yes, sir, yes, sir.

HARRIS-PERRY: And you do that, right. You do it in where are writings. And sometimes it feels to me like that kind of Harlem renaissance moment, where you demonstrate the capacity to do high European culture, even as you engage. And I wonder if you`re doing that consciously, if it`s just -- because I see that as a certain kind of performance of an anti-cultural pathology narrative.

COATES: I`m not doing it on purpose. It`s just fun.

HARRIS-PERRY: All right. I have been long wanting to ask you that.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, thank you for being here this morning and for elevating the debate.

COATES: Thank you.

HARRIS-PERRY: Up next, the point of rage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first man in this country to die for the war of independence was a black man named Christmas Adams. A black man! He was a fool!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: The debate on race, culture, and poverty did not stay in the web pages of "the Atlantic," and "New York" magazine, instead it expanded with pieces popping up in the in "The New York Times," the Daily Beast, "the American prospect", "the Nation," including this piece by Mychal Denzel Smith on the function of black rage, where he wrote, quote, "what some call depression or pessimism, I would call impatience and rage. Our impatience and rage is what has produced progress. That we are still impatient and angry reflects not black people`s failing, but how far America still has to go."

Joining the table is Mychal Denzel Smith, fellow at "the Nation" institute and blogger for thenation.com.

Nice to have you.

MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH, BLOGGER, THE NATION.COM: Thanks for having me.

HARRIS-PERRY: So here`s my question to you, particularly as a young person sitting at the table. Because often my students will say to me, Professor Harris, nothing`s changed. This is just like that. And I always want to say, we can maintain culture critique, political critique while saying, there has, in fact, been progress, that what I experience now might be the business, and yet also not slavery, also not Jim Crow.

So how do we do that? How do we express a rage about the lack of progress while also acknowledging that our circumstances are not that of our fore bearers?

SMITH: We do just that. Like we can say, we can just say we are not slaves anymore. Like, we are not in slavery.

HARRIS-PERRY: And that is good.

SMITH: And that is -- that is great! I`m glad that I do not have to live in chattel slavery. Like, that`s a good thing for me. That I can sit at this table. But, we have so much more to do. We have so far to go. We`re still dealing -- I mean, we`re dealing with food insecurity, mass incarceration, you know, the destruction of the social safety net. All of these things that are under attack, that are race based, that are racism, that are the products of white supremacy, we can still talk about those things.

I think the problem is that we want to place racism and white supremacy in the past. We want to place it, and then we want -- if not in the past, we want to place it on bad actors and place it on people of bad faith, people that are ignorant. And not see that this is a structural issue. Like, this is institutionalized.

HARRIS-PERRY: Britney, you said that -- so Mychal is trying to give us a way to think about what to be angry about, but you said that America is uncomfortable with black rage. What do you mean by that?

COOPER: Right. So there`s this moment in one of Jonathan Chait`s responses where he says, you know, I don`t agree with this portrait of Jonathan Chait --

COOPER: It`s performance, that sort of defense, right? So, again, this is the thing about, so sometimes what happens with white liberal discourse is it becomes about, if you`re saying that some of the things I do or believe are racist, you`re calling me personally a racist. And so, I think that there`s a sort of dishonesty to that, in the sense that we should be able to talk about the fact that we`re all implicated in structures and we`re all trying to navigate them. But instead, it becomes a way to say, I know I`m a good person, so I don`t have to listen to this critique.

And so, again, this theme of, not listening and hearing and engaging at the level of change, with what African-American folks are actually saying about the system, seems to be an enduring threat in this problem.

HARRIS-PERRY: OK, so part of what I hear you saying, you`re not quite saying it, and nor did Mr. Coates, but there is, Tanner, a little bit of, if you are white and writing about blackness, you can, which no one is saying you can`t, it`s not like the n-word, which you`re just not allowed to do, right?

But that many African-Americans leaders are going to begin with a (INAUDIBLE) of suspicion about your writing, they`re going to begin with a suspicion about your goals, and that you perhaps as a white writer, even if you see yourself as part of the multi-racial coalition of progressivism, will be held to a standard -- because part of what Coates asked was, well, why are people mad if Paul Ryan when, after all, President Obama says it? And the fact is, we know why they`re mad when Paul Ryan says it and not President Obama because there`s an assumption about president Obama`s connection to, belief in, and love for the black community or black communities in a way that there`s not for Ryan.

So how do you navigate that in a way that`s careful and intellectually honest as a white writer?

COLBY: Well, I did this specifically. You know, I put my own hypocrisy on the front page of my book. I said, you know, I don`t know any black people, so I`m going to find out why. And I didn`t write a book about race. I didn`t write about black people, I didn`t write a book about what is going on with (INAUDIBLE) neighborhood in West Baltimore where he grew up.

I wrote about myself. I wrote about school bussing in my high school. I wanted to understand where I came from. I wasn`t writing about black people. I was writing about how race shaped my world because that`s what I was curious about. Was, you know, I wasn`t doing the sort of white man`s burden. I`m going to go out and learn about this, and, you know, tell the moral of the story.

And so, I think, you know, white people don`t see themselves as actors in this. They see themselves as the norm and then race is a black thing, whereas, you know, when I stepped out and saw, the only reason why high school existed was to get away from busing. The church that I grew up with in Louisiana was an all-white church, on the other side of the tracks, from the all-black church for specific reasons. So race shaped the world I came from. That`s what I wrote about. And I think if white people took that point of view. This cultural residue that Jonathan Chait talks about, it`s on everyone.

HARRIS-PERRY: That`s right. Everybody, go wash the residue off. We`ll take a short break. We are going to come back. We are adding another dimension to the discussion -- gender.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FANNIE LOU HAWER, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: Fannie Lou, do you know what the past tell you what I say? And I said, yes sir. And he said, I mean if you don`t go down and withdraw your recession, you will have to leave. And I addressed him and told him that I didn`t try to register for you, I tried to register for myself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: OK, one thing about the Chait versus Coates debate is that they are two dudes, you know, guys, men. And although they talk about the tangle of pathologies from the 1965 Moynihan report, they don`t mention that a central focus about that report is the black family structure, specifically, black motherhood. As Tressy McMillan Cotham wrote in her piece on the debate in "the American prospect," quote "the gendered tone of the entire debate has too many javelin flying for me to expect a sister in a wonder woman outfit to be as welcome as, well, wonder woman rarely is when the real superheroes are about real super hero business.

Joining me, Jamel Bowie, staff writer for "Slate" and Micki McElya, I have been saying your name wrong for years, who is associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut.

HARRIS-PERRY: How would the Coates-Chait debate be different, if it is seriously engage feminist scholarship?

BELTRAN: I think what would be really interesting about doing that is it forces us to really think about the fact that we are all going to fail at this. So I think one thing that intersectionality lets us do is, these are hard conversations to have. And one thing I liked about the Chait and Ta-Nehisi, them having their argument was it really felt like two citizens arguing about something that mattered. And they were having a good fight about it. And that fight isn`t always pretty, but they took each other seriously, and they also misunderstood each other, and there were crossing lines of communications, and that is what happens when people fight and argue about important things.

But when you bring an intersection analysis to that, it means that men might not always get gender, straight women might not always get sexuality. Affluent women might not always get class, you know. One of the things you brought up in the earlier point about black song. You talked about black communities, is I realized that one reason we have a hard time thinking about progress at this particular moment is because we have a hard time understanding that black politics and politics in this country in general, but black politics in particular, a solidarity politics. It`s a politics of people saying, I might be doing well, but you`re not, or my cousin or my family or there`s a story here of standing in solidarity with each other. And I think a lot of feminist politics is a politics of solidarity.

So how do you get a politics that can acknowledge that we`re going to fail with each other, but that we have to have an argument that says, let`s talk about gender, but even when you try, you fail. And they failed on that because they weren`t able to put that together. But to say they failed isn`t to say, now you`re done, you`ll never get it.

HARRIS-PERRY: And it`s not to say that the debate is worthless.

Micki, I thought of you in part because in one of the responses, Coates uses the 1996 cover from "the New Republic," that demanded, sign the welfare bill now, from the editors, and it has that image, the image of, presumably, a single poor black mother, smoking while holding the baby, who`s got the bottle. And it is meant to represent all that is the tangle of black pathology. And Coates uses it, you know, just as a visual reminder of what these kinds of magazine have always said, these white liberal magazines, progressive magazines about black life.

But then there is not a real engagement with the fact that is not just a black body, that`s a black woman`s body. And I kept thinking about your work around mammy and representations of black women. What do you see in that moment?

MICKI MACELYA, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT: What I see in the moment, in addition to, also a persistent focus on this debate on race in America as being black and white. So as we think about who`s at risk, it`s also being framed in that way. And then, added to that, by focusing so much on African-American men and boys, as the primary, both the primary agents at risk, and the primary danger, right?

So in the discourse from left to right, this overwhelming focus on men and boys leaves women out, in ways that that first don`t recognize the specificities of black women`s lives and the conditions of their lives in terms of structural racism, in terms of sexism, in terms of sexual stereotyping. So it leaves them out as people potentially in need of resources, leaves them out as people with complex lives, and then adds them through this kind of hyper visibility as a threat, as a threat to black men and boys as well.

HARRIS-PERRY: And Britney, no clearer contemporary example of that, then, on the one hand, an initiative who could hate, right, my brother`s keeper, but then you also have to, it begs the question, what about our daughters?

COOPER: Exactly right. The sort of logic of my brother`s keeper says that patriarchy is going to solve the problem of class and race inequality. And so, what I didn`t see Ta-Nehisi or Jonathan Chait mention was Paul Ryan talked about men standing on the corner, right? So there was a very gendered frame to that analysis as well.

And so, part of the thing is to think about, what are the structural policies that Ryan has supported that put those men on the corner, right? But also, women are not on the corner, because they are out doing wage labor, being paid far less in order to do it and then trying to support those men when they come home and need a place to say. And so women are doing all of this extra labor to hold these communities the together.

And so, what`s interesting is, we`re always talking about women in these policy debates, but never, ever saying it, and so there`s a deep level of contempathy (ph).

HARRIS-PERRY: Professor Britney Cooper just brought on. And if you think there`s not an empirical basis for Professor Cooper, I just want you to know we`ll send out a tweet with this fantastic new report about how African-American women seem to be doing great, but actually, in fact, are not doing so well.

I also just want to let Nerdland know that I am proud to have a new monthly column in "Essence" magazine. And you can read my first column, which reflects on African-American motherhood and the experience of parenting black children in this country in the may issue of "Essence" on newsstands now.

When we come back, we are, of course, going to continue our discussion about race, culture, and how it impacts one of the biggest moves in football right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: DeSean Jackson is only 5`10" tall and 175 pounds. I say only because the 27-year-old Jackson makes his living as a wide receiver in the national football league, a really good wide receiver. Three-time pro-bowler with more than 6,000 yards and 32 touchdowns through six years in the NFL.

So seeing this picture of this very accomplished receiver signing a big new contract wasn`t the most curious part of this picture. I saw on Twitter last week, nor was it the array of native American mascot logos. It`s the fact that Jackson, for the first time as a pro, wasn`t wearing, or making, Philly Green. Even more curious is why.

The team`s March 20th statement says, after careful conversation, during this off-season, the Philadelphia eagles have decided to part ways with DeSean Jackson. But mere minutes before the first fan comment was posted under that statement reading, why? This report was NJ.com report was published.

This Eagles, according to the report, had serious concerns when this was discovered. Quote, "Jackson`s continued association with reputed Los Angeles street gang members, which have been connected to two homicides since 2010." That both men were reportedly members of the Crips along with photos like these of him allegedly flashing that gang`s sign led to wide-spread speculation that Jackson had quote "gang ties" or was actually crypt.

Along with clearing his facebook page of any and all ties of those kinds, Jackson tried to clear his name in his Friday interview with ESPN, in which he stated, quote, "do I know people who are involved? Yes, I`m definitely aware of and know certain gang members. But as far as being affiliated, never have been one. I`ve always felt I`ve been a product of my environment, but I`ve always felt I`ve wanted to do things the right way."

Nj.com strongly asserted Saturday that its findings came as a result of its own reporting and that, quote, "the conspiracy theories surrounding the story are comical." Still, NFL Players union`s head, DeMaurice Smith on Friday told ESPN that the union would be investigating the circumstances of Jackson`s release.

Coming up next, we are going look at the defense of Jackson written by another of his childhood friends, super bowl champion, Richard Sherman.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: We learned two things almost simultaneously on March 28th, that DeSean Jackson was essentially fired from his job as a star wide receiver for the NFL`s Philadelphia Eagles, and according to nj.com, that Jackson`s quote, "gang connections" with individuals back in his hometown of Los Angeles gave his now former employer, the Eagles, serious concerns.

Someone else had connections in Los Angeles during his youth is another accomplished athlete, who has been in the news recently. Star cornerback, Richard Sherman, of the super bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. Sherman, whose bravado sparked a firestorm of race talk back in January, posted this little league photo on Twitter the day after Jackson`s release. His accompanying message, quote, "DeSean Jackson and me have been boys since we were kids. No one should be judged by the action of others." #fam.

Sherman followed up with a column four days ago published on mmqe.com defending Jackson and players like himself, who still have friends back in the hood, writing, consider that for every sever guys I try to help, who end up dead or in jail, there`s another person I was able to rescue from a similar end. Should I give up on everybody out of fear of being dirtied by the media? Sorry, but I was born in this dirt.

Back at the table is Mychal Denzel Smith of "the Nation."

All right, I want to ask you about this, because you connected Sherman`s claim there, about being born in this dirt to a kind of larger process, in a recent column. And you write, in short, if you took two children, one white, one black, and gave them parents with similar jobs, similar educations, and similar values, the black child would be much more likely to grow up in a neighborhood with higher poverty, worse schools, and more violence.

Why does that empirical reality matter for understanding what`s going on with Sherman and Jackson here?

SMITH: It`s -- there`s, I mean, Sherman actually said it best. He was born in this dirt. And neighborhoods for African-Americans are very sticky. And I`m really indebted to sociologist Patrick Sharkie on this point.

But the simple fact is that if you are an African-American of any income level, odds are very good, because of past discrimination, because of not just like the legacy of stuff, but active, ongoing housing discrimination and other factors, you`re much more likely to be born or live in a low-income neighborhood.

HARRIS-PERRY: And also some of it is preferences. I mean, I will also say, you know, my husband and I made a choice about where we lived in New Orleans, in part because we wanted to live in community, with other African-Americans.

SMITH: Absolutely.

HARRIS-PERRY: So if you are middle or upper middle class African-American, you want to live around other white people, your choices are pretty limited in terms of income of the neighborhood. What this means for kids is that their social networks won`t just include doctors, lawyers, other professionals. They will include people who are gang members. They will include people who are either unemployed or work very low-wage jobs. And this will be the case for the rest of their lives. And so, what Sherman is writing about, with DeSean Jackson`s experiencing, what they`re both experiencing is something that`s very common to many African-Americans. And not -- even those who live in predominantly white neighborhoods. I grew up in a mostly white neighborhood. And even so, my church, my parent`s friends, we had connections to people who were not middle class. And that`s just a fact about black life that, I think, is almost unknown to white people.

HARRIS-PERRY: So part of what I have found fascinating about the Chait-Coates debate and about where you responded, and about where you responded, and ultimately, then, even in this moment, where these young men are responding and writing, is that it`s mostly not in the black press. It`s mostly not the Chicago defender and ebony, and "Essence," where these debates would have previously happened, but mostly in a left/right press and yet the voices that are speaking are the voices of people with the lived experience, in addition to the education and the analytic capacity.

How important is that aspect, Mychal? People being -- like, not just give me the damn ball, but give me the damn pen. Let me write about my own experience.

SMITH: Right. So I just signed a new contract with "the Nation," so let me say to them now, before I get DeSean Jackson that I do have several family members in prison --

HARRIS-PERRY: "The Nation" doesn`t care --

SMITH: Just letting you know if that`s a problem. But yes like I was jealous of Richard Sherman`s like analytic ability and his writing skills, because I mean, he laid it out there so perfectly. And he brought up a lot of key factors that I think set up the double standard for what it is to be young and black and in the NFL. And I think, you know, DeSean Jackson`s supposed gang affiliations are not really a problem. It`s the fact that the NFL can`t capitalize off of them. They can`t make any money off of them. If he was a rapper, like, they would sign him and be like, yes, he has gang affiliations!

HARRIS-PERRY: And I also wonder if there`s a particular kind of violence that`s as seen as problematic.

So Britney, we know, for example, take Ray Rice, the raven`s running back, who has allegedly committed acts of domestic violence, who did not lose his job. In fact, have been largely embraced and backed. And there are other examples that violence against women is often rampant in the NFL, and yet that doesn`t get talked about as something that we should therefore distance ourselves from.

COOPER: Absolutely. Like the case of Jovan Belter, who killed his girlfriend, and she was the mother of a young baby. So there is, one, not care for women or for partly times of violence. But part of this is about a sort of respectability politic, right? So, there`s this belief that sport is this kind of neutral category that elevates people --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Level playing people.

COOPER: That`s right. So we want to -- once we give you the mantle, that you`re part of this group, you ought to be able to perform these kinds of tropes in your life. And part of the problem with that is these coaches need some kind of cultural competencies because these folks always have a cultural contempt. They just leave it to sides.

HARRIS-PERRY: That`s right. And particularly this notion with Sherman and Jackson, that they`re embracing that cultural conflict. They`re not trying to distance themselves. But although, man, watching him sign with that Washington team logo, that was hard.

Mychal Denzel Smith, thank you for being here.

And we`ve got more Nerdland at the top of the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: Welcome back. I`m Melissa Harris-Perry.

On Tuesday, the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library is hosting a civil rights summit, marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Johnston signed the act on July 2, marking the legal end to the system of institutionalized segregation. The heart of the act is Title II, which states in part, "All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin."

The law marked a pivotal moment in our country`s history, one that was intended to put an end to situations like the one you see here. This is two weeks before the act was signed, June 18, 1964. In this photo, you can see black and white Americans swimming together in a hotel pool in Florida.

But look more closely. That man in the background is the hotel management, and he is pouring acid into the pool to try to force the swimmers out. That`s because these swimmers were protesting the pool`s whites-only policy. That man is diving into the pool there to physically remove all of the protesters, all of whom were arrested.

Swimming pools are one example of a public good, paid for by public dollars, and there was a boom of pool construction in the 1930s, during the New Deal, providing jobs for unemployed workers and recreation for citizens and communities. But black Americans, who were paying taxes just like white Americans and putting money in a collective pot intended to be used for a collective good, were legally barred in most states from accessing those public goods, goods like public swimming pools, despite the fact that they were helping to fund them.

Swimming pools were the site of a series of protests. Here is a young man being arrested in 1949 after 70 black youth came to the Anacostia Park swimming pool in Washington, D.C., and the white pool patrons refused to let them swim.

And at this time, Illinois pool -- in 1962, black youth marched for an hour, protesting the pool`s whites-only policy. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was intended to change all of that by granting equal access to public goods to the black Americans who were already paying equal contributions.

But what happened to public accommodations in the years after 1964 is more complicated. Here are black youth swimming in a state park pool in a small Georgia town in 1965. What we don`t see are the white swimmers who left the pool just before the picture was taken.

The Civil Rights Act gave African-Americans access to public goods, like public pools. But, in the years that followed, the public goods themselves garnered less investment.

Economist Robert Reich writes: "Since the late 1970s, almost all the gains from growth have gone to the top, but as the upper middle class and the rich begin shifting to private institutions, they withdrew political support for public ones. In consequence, their marginal tax rates dropped, setting off a vicious cycle of diminishing revenues and deteriorating quality, spurring more flight from public institutions."

Jeff Wiltse, who is the author of the book "Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America," explains, "When black Americans gained equal access to municipal pools, white swimmers generally abandoned them for private pools, and cities downgraded the public importance of swimming pools."

Fifty right after the Civil Rights Act, the struggle is not just about getting access to the pool. For some, it`s about keeping the pool open for all.

With me at the table, Jamelle Bouie, who is staff writer at Slate, Cristina Beltran, who is associate professor at New York University, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, who is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Tanner Colby, author of "Some of My Best Friends Are Black."

So, nice to have you all here.

Let me start you here, Khalil. When you look at the disinvestment in public goods that has occurred since 1964, do you read where we are right now, 50 years later, as the Civil Rights Act having been successful or having failed?

KHALIL GIBRAN MUHAMMAD, DIRECTOR, SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE: Oh, well, from that vantage point, it`s failed miserably, partly because the Civil Rights Act, although it was about access, ultimately, underneath it, it was about equity.

And at the end of the day, the famous quip that King always said was, we didn`t just gain access to the lunch counter; we needed money to eat there. That quip speaks volume about the idea that under Nixon`s new federalism, so we`re talking about the next president after LBJ, actually created the possibility for the federal government to put more control at the state level, and, at the state level, to ultimately be able to use political favors, as had always been the case, for the purposes of realigning political parties.

And so we know that through the language of law and order, we know with the retrenchment towards civil rights, through the tropes of black militancy, that we begin to see the federal government divesting in the very infrastructure that is possible as a result of the Civil Rights Act, but needs money.

And so that new federalism is picked up by Reagan. Then you have a retreat against affirmative action, which becomes the duel end of the spectrum. The black middle class is profiting at the expense of the whites, and the black poor is becoming dependent on government services, all of which continued to see social spending in the nation under the Reagan administration, for example, in the 1980s go from 12 percent of the budget to 3 percent of the budget.

So everything that potentially made possible the growth of something that we might call racial equality in America, the entire infrastructure, the bottom literally falls out by the 1980s.

HARRIS-PERRY: And so when we look then, Jamelle, where we find ourselves in this moment, then, 50 years later, the Urban League recently released a report, kind of a state of black America -- and we just pulled a few stats from it -- that when we look at income, you talk about having the money to eat at the lunch counter, African-American households make 60 percent the income of white households and have only 60 percent of the wealth of White households, that black unemployment is about -- African-Americans are about half as likely to be employed and 2.5 times more likely to live in poverty, and that African-Americans are 5.6 times more likely to be incarcerated.

These are kind of the facts of life around questions of race and the racial divide now. Would you assess, then, that our civil rights legacy 50 years later is a failure?

JAMELLE BOUIE, SLATE: I`m not sure I would say it`s a failure. I would say it`s trending towards failure, right, that, like, I don`t want to discount the actual gains, the gains that have happened, right, that like the fact that we`re sitting at this table here is a gain, the fact that, you know, a whole host of institutions in American life are more integrated than they were 50 years ago is a gain.

But, like Khalil said, there`s been this massive disinvestment in our public infrastructure. And that is a loss and that is something that is holding back racial equality. I mean, if you just look at schools, right, like, schools are in an ongoing period of re-segregation, right?

Like, large percentage of African-American students go to schools that are 90 percent, 95 percent black. Large majorities of African-American and Latino students that are majority African-American and Latino. White families have all but, if they haven`t pulled their kids out of public schools, they have been able to use zoning laws and local institutions to create enclaves of white schools that get all the resources, while schools maybe a mile down the road, two miles down the road are starved for them.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, I want to push on this a little bit, because, Cristina, this feels to me, this course of kind of a white flight to better-resourced spaces is certainly kind of -- as I was coming through grad school, that`s what we learned. Right?

We studied that -- particularly, you got black mayors, you got integration through the civil rights movement, and then you started seeing white flight. And the presumption was that there was some place you could flee, and therefore be safe from these kind of social statistics that I just suggested.

But when we started talking about a massive public disinvestment in infrastructure, you know, the white people, they ride on the roads too, and along with the African-American -- we all go over the bridges together to get into the city. It would be nice to go to a free pool if you are a working-class white person, and, in fact, as we have seen in this downturn, an increasing number of white Americans experiencing poverty, then the lack of that safety net, so, should we now be revising this idea, that there isn`t a place to flee, that, in fact, African-Americans are the miner`s canary wherever -- these social statistics also have consequences for white households.

CRISTINA BELTRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANALYSIS, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: Right.

No, I think what`s really great about having this conversation is, we don`t tend to talk about it in terms of the public sphere and the decline of the public sphere, and the fact that we have -- we have never truly had an integrated, vibrant public sphere that has been supported and allowed to thrive, right?

So the very history you`re describing is talking about a public sphere that is immediately losing resources at a time when it`s finally integrated. So I think...

HARRIS-PERRY: I always ask people, there`s all this focus on those public bus systems in the South. When was the last time you rode a bus in the South, right, that those public transportation systems have just lost.

BELTRAN: Right. Right.

So then there`s -- so I think there`s also this really interesting -- it`s ironic that we talk about the `60s as the era of big government in a lot of ways, because really what we`re really talking about is almost immediate massive retrenchment into the private realm. So I think you`re right.

I think we need to be talking to people about what has the loss been, what has the tradeoff been to retreat into the private -- how do we not talk about the fact that we need roads, we need bridges, we need public amenities for all citizens?

But it`s been a lot easier, historically, to make deals that allow the public realm to thrive when some people weren`t a part of it. They could make deals around Social Security, when certain people weren`t at the table, so there`s a whole debate about like the racialization of what constitutes publicness and what constitutes privateness. And we don`t talk about the racial and class dynamics of that nearly as much as we ought to.

HARRIS-PERRY: Stay with us.

When we come back, I have been asking everyone else, do they think the Civil Rights Act was a failure, in part because it is the frame -- I have been introducing you as the author of this particular book, but you`re also an author a series of articles that do make some claims about the failures of the policies in the post-1964 era.

When we come back, we`re going to talk specifically about that and about LBJ`s vision in his own words.

But, first, a programming note. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, is hosting a civil rights summit starting Tuesday. President Obama and three former presidents will be among those participating.

All this week, MSNBC will have special coverage of the civil rights summit.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LYNDON JOHNSON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful spirit. Its purpose is not to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions, divisions which have lasted all too long. Its purpose is national, not regional.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: That was Lyndon Johnson preparing to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In this part of the speech, we hear the president anticipating criticism of the law from white Americans opposed to integration, stating that its purpose is not to divide. But, as we have been discussing, the end of legalized segregation did not necessarily result in the decline of racial divisions.

One of our panelists, Tanner Colby, wrote a series of articles for Slate.com called "The Massive Liberal Failure on Race," in which he says: "So while the great liberal crusade of the 1960s produced victories in the area of civil rights, it did little in the way of producing actual jobs for black Americans."

So, Tanner, you have been on the show many times.

COLBY: Right.

HARRIS-PERRY: When I started reading this series, I was like, I don`t know what to make about this. I felt a lot of angst about the sort of description of this period, which I think of as my lifetime, right, as a great failure of policy, because, again, although we are not where we want to be, we are also not where we were.

COLBY: Right.

HARRIS-PERRY: So tell me why you assess it as an era of failure.

COLBY: I think we -- it comes down to, you go back to the argument of culture -- we did a lot of, you know, legal changes and policy changes, without addressing the cultural problems that lie underneath it.

And that`s not to say a culture problem in black America, but the alienation between black and white America. We bussed black and white students into the same schools, and then everyone sat on the opposite sides of the cafeteria.

So, unless you were going to deal with the social fabric angle of it, then the policy issue was necessary, but insufficient.

HARRIS-PERRY: But wasn`t the presumption that addressing the structural would, in fact, generate the opportunities for the social fabric, so that if you put kids in school together, that they would grow up together, and learn together, and would -- I mean, I think part of the problem -- actually, let me back up.

The question is then, what would constitute success? Would it have to be fully equal integration, or would it be kind of equitable resources that are distributed, whether or not an integrated space exists?

COLBY: I think -- and this is where it really comes down to housing. An integrated space almost has to be done voluntarily.

I think you have to acknowledge the fact that certain black communities wanted to stay homogeneous and certain wealthy white communities were just going to escape, escape out and leave anyway. But if you concentrated on areas where integration was possible -- the neighborhood I focused on in Kansas city, it was black and white patterns who chose to live in an integrated neighborhood together, and therefore their children grew up wanting to be there, whereas when you put people in a situation where their parents didn`t necessarily want them to be there and weren`t supporting them -- this is what James Coleman said, the sociologist who was the original impetus for bussing.

He said, if you put black students in an all-white environment and their parents don`t want them there and aren`t standing behind them, then the whiplash can actually be worse.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, you also write, and I want to ask you about this one, Khalil.

So, Colby, you write: "In one of history`s great ironies, the grand-scale integrationist schemes embraced by liberals during the civil rights movement took hold only after the rise of black pride and ethnic solidarity was well underway, convulsed by spasms of white guilt, terrified by the prospect of more urban riots, and not really understanding the complex wants and desires of black America to begin with. So steps taken to dismantle the color line were accompanied by efforts to shore up the foundations of a separate black America and preserve its cultural norms."

So, you know, as -- you know, here you are at head of the Schomburg, which is both a separate institution, but also an institution as part of the New York Public Library system. And part of what I wondered, part of what gave me discomfort about that, Tanner, was the idea that success could only constitute the sort of full integration. I want both. I want separate cultural spaces and equal access.

MUHAMMAD: Well, here, I think there`s one thing I want to take issue with.

HARRIS-PERRY: Sure.

MUHAMMAD: And that is that housing was still a product of a real estate market that was committed to catering to the preferences of white Americans, and not to black Americans.

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS-PERRY: So, it`s not all equal, equal choice.

MUHAMMAD: No, not by any stretch of the imagination.

And although there are many pockets of integrated communities -- I live in one right now in suburban New Jersey -- these communities are constrained by desperate efforts to stave off what they see as the high cost of integration.

In a state like New Jersey, Governor Christie does not actually support these old-line integrated suburbs, because they have heavy infrastructure cost, their school systems are older, their salaried public servants are well paid and have extensive benefits, meaning that the cost of integration means that everyone`s got to share in that. The state`s got to share in that and the individual taxpayers.

What`s easy to do is -- if you`re white, is to fly, to flee to yet the next suburb, where the schools were just built, the teachers are brand-new, and there`s no guaranteed benefit plan, meaning that those costs are fundamentally different.

HARRIS-PERRY: Khalil, I do not want to move away from that just yet, because what you said there was so interesting, because it`s not Governor Christie doesn`t want integration. Right? Who knows what`s in Governor Christie`s heart. It is that there is a position about small government and small government budgets which as a result of that position of wanting to spend less on public resources, means that you cannot support the thing that makes integration possible, right, which is in part, high-quality public schools, right, because then that`s when everybody just kind of goes to their neighborhood school.

MUHAMMAD: But it also means that, at some point, you have to pay the price of taking the poorest in the community and giving them the same kind of educational and housing resources that we know sustain middle-class and productive communities. That cost cannot be pushed off forever.

And so someone`s got to pay that cost. Either the federal government`s going to pay it or the state government`s going to pay it. But local communities are not going to pay it, because local communities are going to constantly reconstitute themselves, constitute the boundaries of enforcement, and say, well, if you`re not willing to pay, then just move.

HARRIS-PERRY: Jamelle, I want to let you in on this, only because I know this is part of what you were writing so much about.

BOUIE: I`m not sure how much I have to add to that.

There`s a conversation we had about sort of the complex that makes the small government conservatism and what means given our racial reality. I think Khalil`s absolutely right to emphasize that someone has to spend the resources.

One of the things that sort of gets glossed over in our national myth about ourselves is the fact that the American middle class and the American white middle class is the product of government subsidies, is a product of subsidies of housing, of subsidies of transportation infrastructure, subsidies of school infrastructure.

And part of what`s happened over the last 40 or 50 years is there`s been a conscious decision to not do that for integrated communities, to not do that for African-Americans and to not do that for Latinos.

HARRIS-PERRY: And just I want to make sure that I note this. I think that`s right and I think the impact on communities of color is most urgent and clear, but that it also then has an impact on the white middle class, which we have seen the bottom drop out of in part also because of this unwillingness.

So I just would to like, everybody, your new thought, your homework though experiment is every time you hear someone say government, substitute the word public, and see if you feel differently about the policy when instead of hearing the word government, you hear the word public. You tend to think of yourself as the public, although maybe not as part of the government.

Jamelle Bouie and Cristina Beltran and Tanner Colby, thank you all so much. Khalil is going to hang out in the next hour.

But up next, when we come back -- no, there`s not a next hour -- there`s just a next half-hour. I tried to get a whole `nother hour, but they won`t let me.

All right, when we come back, we are going to talk about Twitter and its take on everything from communism to comedy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: It`s no secret that the United States has tried all sorts of strategies to destabilize the communist government in Cuba, and eliminate its one-time leader, Fidel Castro, who first took power in the small island nation in 1959.

So, in 1960, the CIA gave six poison pills to two gangsters who tried for several months to have people put the pills in Castro`s food. That didn`t work. Then there was the Bay of Pigs invasion. In April 1961, the U.S. tried to topple Fidel and his communist government with a group of CIA-financed and trained Cuban refugees. Well, that failed too.

The group was overwhelmed by counterattacks from Castro`s military. Of the 1,200-plus Cuban exiles, 100 were killed and 1,100 were captured. Despite the failures of the United States to either assassinate or oust Fidel Castro, poison, and an armed invasion are widely recognized methods for eliminating one`s enemies.

And even though Castro handed power over to his brother, Raul, in 2008, the thought of a Fidel/communism-free Cuba remains a longstanding U.S. interest. And it turns out that the U.S. has experimented with less commonly accepted tools for creating unrest, twitter, or at least something like it.

According to a new report by the Associated Press, in 2009, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, hatched a plan to develop a bare-bones Cuban Twitter. The plan was supposed to use cell phone text messaging to bypass Cuba`s control of information and Internet restrictions.

Once the base of Cuban Twitter grew, operators would introduce content to inspire Cubans to organize smart mobs. But the base just never grew that big and the technology was never that great. And by 2012, Cuban Twitter vanished. So it was a, you know, #fail.

But it is interesting to note that no less an agency, no less than the United States government finds such power in social media that it now goes down in history in the same category as poison pills and armed insurrection, at least when it comes to Cuba.

When we come back, the positive and negative aspects of the power of those 140 characters right here at home.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: Nothing captures the promises and challenges of democracy like Twitter.

On one hand, it`s profoundly egalitarian. Everybody gets 140 characters. Individuals can initiate action, even if they lack the traditional sources of political power, like wealth. On Twitter, the playing field is level, the barriers to entry are low, and it is easy to generate collective action.

But maybe you will remember that our founders had some concerns about democracy. James Madison wrote in "The Federalist Paper No. 10": "Measures are too often decided not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority."

Comedy Central`s Stephen Colbert felt that superior force in the form of a Twitter hashtag last week. On last Thursday`s show, Colbert satirized Washington, D.C.`s football team owner Dan Snyder`s attempts to pacify critics of the team`s logo. The Colbert show Twitter account then tweeted just the punchline from that segment, and, by itself, without context, the tweet was clearly anti-Asian. The outcry was immediate; #cancelColbert become a trending topic for more than 24 hours.

On Monday, Colbert addressed the controversy in a way that only Stephen Colbert could.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE COLBERT REPORT")

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE COLBERT REPORT": Who would have thought a means of communication limited to 140 characters would ever create misunderstanding?

The cancelColbert people think that even, in context, I am a racist. I just want to say that I am not a racist. I don`t even see race, not even my own. People tell me I`m white and I believe them because I just devoted six minutes to explaining how I`m not a racist.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: While Colbert received the bulk of the attention, the movement that was lost in the mix were the Native Americans who have organized against Snyder`s team mascot.

And that is a problem, according to Jeff Yang, who wrote in "The Wall Street Journal" -- quote -- "In short, we have arrived at the era of the weaponized hashtag, where loosely organized and barely controlled social mobs swarm institutions and individuals at a scale large enough so that the trending of the hashtag itself becomes news, often overwhelming discussion of the topic that originally spawned it."

At the table, Jeff Yang, columnist of "The Wall Street Journal" online who wrote that article on the weaponized hashtags, Zerlina Maxwell, a political analyst at Grio.com, contributor, Brittney Cooper, who is assistant professor of women and gender studies at Rutgers University, and MSNBC anchor Richard Lui.

So nice to have you all here.

Jeff, I want to start with you. Is Twitter a revolution or a mob?

JEFF YANG, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": It`s a little of both, right?

I think a lot of revolutions have begun with -- quote, unquote -- "mobs," and a lot of that`s a matter of perspective.

HARRIS-PERRY: Sure.

YANG: But I do think that one clear thing that comes from this is that the egalitarianism of Twitter, the notion that we all have 140 characters to vote with, so to speak, is a little bit of an illusion. Like anywhere else, the larger voice, the people who have the greater number of followers, the more ability to retweet and signal-amplify end up becoming the primary message.

And frankly that means that they get more attention in other places beyond the digital space.

HARRIS-PERRY: I guess what does seem egalitarian though is that you don`t need -- like you don`t need to be hired by a news organization, right? You don`t need a university to give you tenure in order to build that following, right? Yes, there`s still a hierarchy, but the hierarchy is not necessarily attached to the goods and resources that exists in kind of traditional spaces.

YANG: Right. It disrupts traditional hierarchies and it creates new ones.

And those hierarchies in many ways can place people who are historically not in the center of the communication, in the center of the ability to generate and manage dialogue, at the top. And I think we have seen that here, which is really interesting and really valuable. But it`s also a little frightening.

And I think that what we have seen is, when things are seen on Twitter as an ability, as a means to communicate or, even more importantly, perhaps, just draw attention to a message, it`s a tremendously powerful tool. When that power is then levied against a single individual who steps out of line, it becomes a lot more like, I don`t know, cyber-bullying? Yes, that term`s been used.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, Richard, as you look at that particular moment, the cancelColbert moment, because I think, for all of us engaged with Twitter, there are moments where it`s like, yes, go Twitter, get them, get them, get them, Twitter. And other times, it`s like, oh, God, is this happening, oh, no, right?

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS-PERRY: How did you experience the cancelColbert moment?

RICHARD LUI, MSNBC ANCHOR: The cancelColbert hashtag, when that came out, you had to really read into to find out what was the process, the timeline that progressed over that period of with, what, 24 to 48 hours.

When I look at what Suey Park told "The New Yorker," though, and her intent behind this, she`s basically saying, hey, I know the way this system works. I know how this pool is. I know how warm the water is. Why can`t I get in and swim too? I really don`t want "Colbert" to be canceled, but I know that this is an opening for me to get my message out, just like many other people do, so why not?

Why not? Me, using this very same process, I have that ability and I should, whether you see it as a revolution or not.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, it`s interesting in part because -- so just so folks know, if you haven`t been following this, Suey Park is the Twitter activist who really started the cancelColbert hashtag.

LUI: Right. Right.

HARRIS-PERRY: But part of it is, Zerlina, though, it feels to me like one of the thing that`s rewarded in the warm water of Twitter, and in the warm water of cable news is outrage, right? Nothing makes a better segment or a better tweet than, I can`t even believe, right?

And, right, so, oh, let`s go get outraged. But outrage is not always leading us to the most complex analysis.

ZERLINA MAXWELL, THEGRIO: No.

And I think it`s a both/and conversation. You can start a conversation on Twitter because you`re outraged about something that happens in the real world. But then what are you doing in the real world to couple your Twitter activism to help, you know, change the conversation around that issue?

So, for example, one of the things I talk about a lot is rape culture. I read an op-ed in "TIME" which I found really offensive and I was outraged. And so I chose to react to that by starting a hashtag and also writing a response in "TIME." And so it was both/and. It was Twitter and also offline activism that allowed -- well, really not offline. It was a "TIME" op-ed online.

But it was something that -- well, it was still online. I can`t leave the Internet.

(CROSSTALK)

LUI: It`s all very blurry.

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

HARRIS-PERRY: I haven`t been out of my house in six months.

(LAUGHTER)

MAXWELL: Right.

HARRIS-PERRY: Richard, I felt you responding to Zerlina there when she was talking about the both/and of activism.

LUI: Yes, the both/ands of activism, when you look at it, and when I go back to Suey Park and what the Asian American-Pacific Islander community is trying to say, is, hey, you know, this is a voice that we don`t often have an open or an opening to get out our message, so let`s do it.

And it may not be well-accepted. I may not have really calculated this cancelColbert after-effect, and that`s what she was saying. I just kind of had time that evening. Why not? I`m going to do this. And it also says, hey, look, I get to define -- what she`s saying, I get to define my space for me and for us and my argument. It is not being told to me as to what is worse racism in her words.

HARRIS-PERRY: Right, and it does feel to me like critically important, the assertion of that voice, right, to just kind of stand in this space and say, you know what, us, too, right?

LUI: Right. Right.

HARRIS-PERRY: But on the other hand, as you pointed out, Jeff, the question is then who also gets silenced.

So we have got more to say on this.

And Brittney, I`m going to bring you in, because when we come back, we`re going to talk about something that`s actually been happening all during the show. It`s very self-referential. That is Black Twitter. We have got a little bit on the funny side of Black Twitter.

And, yes, if you don`t know about this, it`s an actual thing. I didn`t just make that up. It`s a thing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re in a war. Nobody cares about the struggle anymore.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Struggle.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are too complacent.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Somebody should do something.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hashtag.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nothing will change. We need to mobilize. This country is racist.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Racist.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Racist.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Racist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: Well, that was a hilarious take on Black Twitter by @IssaRae Presents.

Let`s be clear. Black Twitter is an actual thing, with some real influence. Fashion magazine "Marie Claire" found that out this week, after the magazine tweeted out a photo of Kendall Jenner with cornrows and wrote, "Kendall Jenner takes bold braids to a new epic level."

Well, Black Twitter took the magazine to task, with tweets like, "Thanks to @marieclaire and Kendall Jenner for inventing #boldbraids. I have never seen these before in my entire life #groundbreaking."

"Marie Claire" quickly apologized, when they tweeted: "We didn`t mean to offend or imply that cornrows were new. Our tweet was poorly worded," and, "We thought her hair looked great and recognize women have been styling their hair like this for ages."

So, Brittney, it is always fun when people are introduced to Black Twitter who did not know it existed...

(CROSSTALK)

LUI: In different ways.

HARRIS-PERRY: .. previously in a variety of ways. But I have seen it both act in forms of kind of making sure that cultural appropriation is not occurring, that I am kind of cheering on, and I have seen it act as a mob.

COOPER: Yes, so I think the thing we have to figure out is how to both harness the kind of cultural power that we have to direct conversations, while not seeming reactionary, right?

And this is the thing that I worry about, is that our movements are easily and can be easily co-opted because if we`re not careful about the long game and what is our end goal, then, certainly, we look like we`re not being thoughtful, that we`re not being careful, and then we get sort of charges of rage and you`re out of control and language about mobs, right?

And I always think that that`s very charged language, particularly when you`re talking about how people of color engage in social media, that it`s always inherently violent, that it`s not particularly thoughtful. And I find Black Twitter to be absolutely hilarious and sort of, you know, the humor is biting, but it`s completely brilliant.

And it`s the kind of cultural critique that African-Americans are known for, culturally, from The Dozens, from Toast, on down.

HARRIS-PERRY: But I also want to be clear that there is some eating of the self that occurs. You are part of what was one of the most painful things to watch over the course of the past year, something that Michelle Goldberg described in her "Nation" piece as the toxic feminist Twitter wars.

And I will just read a piece from Goldberg, who says: "Even as online feminism has proved itself a real force for change, many of the most avid digital feminists will tell you that it`s become toxic. Indeed, there`s a nascent genres of essays by people who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in it, not because of sexist trolls, but because of slashing righteousness of other feminists."

And maybe this goes back to your point about the real world vs. social media platform. I am as self-righteous as I can be when I am standing just in judgment.

COOPER: Yes.

And I will say, I have been a victim of some of this kind of reactionary judgment, because of certain kind of things I have chosen to support in feminist movement building. And one of the reasons I wanted to participate in the "Nation" piece was to say to women of color feminists, I don`t want black and women of color feminists to look reactionary, that it`s always been a visionary justice project.

And that goes away when we do the emotional labor that Cristina Beltran talked about of being angry. People are perfectly comfortable with people of color being angry in social movements, right? But it becomes a way to discredit us. And so how do we both harness that power and not look reactionary, but at the same time not succumb to the kind of policing that says, you have done me injury, but I demand that you deal with me respectfully before I will listen to you? Because that`s another problem.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, Jeff, part of what I really love about this language, and that, I guess, gave me some angst around the cancelColbert is, so I love the idea of insertion of the voice, using this relatively democratic with a little D version to do it, but I also wonder, so then what do I now know about an Asian-American political platform, other than, don`t use these kind of clearly offensive terms?

So what is the proactive version that emerges from this?

YANG: Well, that`s a big problem with Twitter. Twitter doesn`t generally, at least, used in this form, in this sort of hashtag lack of context, more about signal application form, does not allow a lot of room for either context or dissent.

And part of the problem with Twitter`s notion of democracy is that so much of Twitter is about resharing and retweeting and favoriting, right? And that is predominantly the kind of behavior that leads to momentum around a single cause, a single message, a single opinion.

And when there are disagreements to that opinion, they either get overridden, or in many cases actually attacked. So that is anti-democratic. When you have a situation in which the diversity of Twitter, including diversity of people of color in the Twitter movements, Black Twitter and so forth, is not recognized or celebrated, instead, people who step out of line, who refuse to support, who won`t stand with various people are cast out and attacked.

That doesn`t look like democracy to me, or at least not the kind that we want to...

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS-PERRY: Richard, you have spent much of your career in international politics, looking at the rest of the world, and some of that is about democratization movements. And if we think about the Iran Green movement and the way in which Twitter`s avatar has turned green or the Arab spring in Cairo, do you think that it actually is, that maybe we`re just being a little too U.S. in our focus, and that, in fact, Twitter does have the capacity to do this big movement-building?

LUI: Well, that really is the point, isn`t it?

And we look at Twitter or any other media platform, we can`t look at it holistically and say one thing about it. It`s different for every context. When you talk about the reactionary that you -- reactionary movement based on what is happening in Black Twitter, maybe it isn`t, what`s the reaction, it`s what is being said originally.

It`s not a problem with the reaction. It`s really what`s being said. But the person saying that is not used to the reaction, because they have not been in the public sphere before. So in this case, it could be, hey, I`m just not -- we`re used to getting certain types of tweets. We`re conditioned. It`s easy for us.

Others who are just jumping out into this space, whether it be about cornrows or other, they`re just learning to do that. In the international space, what`s great about this is it brings back this sort of hearkening, and I hate to sound like this is old school, but e-mail.

When e-mail was prevalent in the 1980s, we all started to use it, that`s the first time we realized, we have this ability to make effective ties to people that are across the world, but we still have the dangers of flaming, which we`re seeing today, of spamming, which we`re seeing today.

So, the positive side, I think, when you look at the Arab spring and all these collections is there`s this exponential capability of these media platforms to bring together these groups that don`t have the ability to have effective ties, no matter where you`re at and no matter who you are on what side, up or down, left or right.

HARRIS-PERRY: Richard Lui, Jeff Yang, Brittney Cooper, and Zerlina.

I have many, many more questions for you that are written down. And you must come back, we will talk more, particularly about the rape culture piece, which I think is part of this question of not being used to it, or in fact, being used to certain kind of attacks and the ways it can be triggering..

(CROSSTALK)

MAXWELL: Right.

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS-PERRY: ... so much more to talk about.

But time was not on my side today.

But there is more TV going on after this thing happens. Up next, there is a plan in the works for a new prequel to "Gone With the Wind." The story is going to focus on the character of Mammy. You all knew I just had to have something to say about that.

It`s Margaret Mitchell`s classic saga published in 1936 and translated to film in 1939. The movie became a huge hit, earning $20 million at the box office in its first year, which was a lot in 1939; 59 years later, the film was reissued and brought in nearly $200 million.

In October of this, the Margaret Mitchell estate will add another novel to the franchise written by Donald McCaig. This new prequel won`t focus on Rhett and Scarlett`s melodramatic love story. Instead, the protagonist will be Mammy.

In 1939, actor Hattie McDaniel famously brought the character Mammy to life, becoming the first African-American to win an Oscar for her performance in scenes like these.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "GONE WITH THE WIND")

HATTIE MCDANIEL, ACTRESS: If you don`t care what folks says about this family, I does. I has told ya and told ya that you can always tell us a lady by the way that she eat in front of folks like a bird, and I ain`t aiming for you to go to Mr. John Wilkes and eat like a field hand and gobble like a hog."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: Though historic, McDaniel`s win was controversial because of some of the troublesome Mammy stereotypes of her character. And the fact that 51 years passed before another black female actor, Whoopi Goldberg, won an Academy Award adds even more meaning to McDaniel`s complicated portrayal.

Back with me now to discuss Mammy and the woman who portrayed her is Micki McElya, who is author of "Clinging to Mammy," and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, who is director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,

Micki, Mammy, as portrayed by Hattie McDaniel, is the one that we remember most, but it is certainly not the beginning or the end of Mammy. Tell us a little bit about the arc of that stereotype, that character.

MCELYA: I mean, in many ways, the figure that sets off this both visual and narrative framework comes from "Uncle Tom`s Cabin." It comes from Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom`s wife, Aunt Chloe, is represented as an idealized, nurturing Mammy figure, enslaved mother figure, as the counterpoint.

And that moves across, which I think really highlights the way in which this figure is appealing to white people across political spectrums, that it has the staying power that we`re witnessing in this moment where the Mitchell trust is now releasing yet another iteration of the story.

HARRIS-PERRY: And so for me, I suppose, Khalil, part of what is distressing is that Hattie McDaniel, that human person, has a fascinating biography, and I would to even see that come to film.

But the idea that instead not having McDaniel, the actual African-American woman, but instead Mammy, that fictional character, is once again going to get the space, the air.

MUHAMMAD: Well, yes.

Well, there`s of course a dark side to the actual story of the black woman who works in white folks` homes. Part of it is that she`s always someone who is both in proximity to the master and also in proximity to the enslaved and can`t entirely be trusted.

There`s also something to be said about the agency of black women who were able to transcend the boundaries of their position in order to put money into the community, in order to fund and be the backbone of social justice movements, even in the abolitionist context, as well as into the late 19th and early 20th century. And that`s a black woman out of place in this story.

So, if you actually begin to peel back the layers of Hattie McDaniel`s own life, someone who struggled with finding meaningful work, but was incredibly talented, and talked a lot about how hard it was to make a living in America, then you`re commenting on a larger tragedy in American society and culture, which is that we want to pretend that everything is OK, when in fact it`s far from it.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, this one of wanting to pretend, Micki, I want to come to you, because one of the things that is always the most horrifying to me is that in 1923, a U.S. congressman, along with the Daughters of the Confederacy, pushed for funding of a Mammy monument.

So, that is not the Mammy monument. That is an image there of a restaurant which still exists, where you can still go eat right now in Natchez, Mississippi. But that idea that Mammy continues as a marketing tool and even as this method of like imagination within the American culture..

MCELYA: And as a profoundly political too, right?

So, to erect a monument within Washington, D.C., to Mammys and say, this is black women`s role in our in public culture in 1923 and to have it pass successfully in the Senate, and only fail because of black protests, and finally it was allowed to die in the House, thankfully -- we don`t have this monument -- but also the way that Hattie McDaniel`s life really highlights the complex histories, her own struggle with that character highlights the complex history.

What she brought to that character highlights it. Her parents were born enslaved. Her father served in the United States Colored Troops in the Civil War. And her mother fled with her family, too, ended up in a contraband camp when they fled to Union lines in Tennessee.

Their stories get totally erased in this portrayal that then she`s required to perform, because that`s the role that`s available to her, as she`s trying to shift it.

HARRIS-PERRY: And, of course, Hattie McDaniel said: I would rather play a maid and make $700 a week than be a maid and make $7 a week.

Hattie McDaniel is worth knowing more about, also the character of Mammy worth knowing more about. We will put up a syllabus for you.

Thank you, Micki and Khalil.

And that`s our show for today. Whew. I`m exhausted.

Thanks to you at home for watching. I`m going to see you next Saturday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.END

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